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Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

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Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#141

Post by eutropia »

paulgb wrote: post #26
SirMaster wrote: post #6

When has UBI actually every been tried? I don't think any trials really qualify as "Universal". IMO the universal part is the hard part and changes it drastically. Compared to a small limited trial of giving people money, where does it all come from when it's actually universal? And what are the effects on the overall economy when it's universal?

Yeah, many of the quoted examples miss the “universal” part: > recurring cash relief to low-income residents for 2 years > Finland launched a program to give €560 ($616) a month to 2,000 unemployed citizens > doled out monthly unconditional sums of $500 to 125 low-income participants for two years My contention with UBI is that if you give cash to everybody, it ends up being largely a wealth transfer to the rent seek…

This is why you should couple UBI with an eye-wateringly (90-95%) high tax on Land rents, (i.e, the value of the unimproved raw resource. "Land" is more than just plots of terrain: Mineral, Water, and Wildlife/Fishing rights - along with radio spectrum, etc all fall into this category.) Improvements and value-adds from human activity remain profitable, gatekeeping access to resources is not.

Economically speaking, your ability to compete for the extra disposable income is the same as anyone else's, but that money originated in the taxed rent from the Land you control, and any elasticity in demand for your Land caused by the increase in cash running around is priced in - if more people need what you have, your taxes increase along with it.

What remains for you to profit from is what service or value you add above and beyond the market value of the underlying Land.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#142

Post by mauvehaus »

HideousKojima wrote: post #57
sodality2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen proponents suggest we take the money from other welfare programs, as paradoxically the means-testing overhead costs so much that we can afford to pay everyone $X instead of thousands of workers to process thousands of welfare applications. I haven’t seen specific numbers about this though. Edit: I'm failing to find numbers to support this now.

I hate welfare programs as much as the next libertarian leaning conservative, but overhead from means testing (and admin overhead generally) really isn't a major expense. Medicaid overhead is a grand total of 5% of the program. It's really just UBI advocates handwaving away the question of funding.

The cost of means testing isn't just what you see on a budget. It's also all of the people who are eligible, but incapable of demonstrating that fact because of some byzantine requirements imposed on them to show eligibility[0].

There will, of course, be people who consider this to be a feature, not a bug. That's an ideological difference outside the scope of this comment.

[0] Source: I know someone applying for long-term disability. Getting an answer to a question as straightforward as how to sign the paperwork (wet signature, digital, print/sign/scan, fax?!) has been a challenge for them. It's also unclear if the three different signatures needed of them are even to be done the same way. This is a generally competent, functional person I'm talking about, by the way.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#143

Post by FireBeyond »

psunavy03 wrote: post #22
mjevans wrote: post #5

I would like to counter with first hand observed real world evidence. Raising the minimum wage near where I live (Seattle area) has raised the prices of everything. Rent seeking land owners raise their rents, which passes through to everything and absorbs the water trying to sate the parched desert. IMO either directly supplying what UBI is supposed to provide, or encouraging local supply to match the market need, th…

Funny that you blame landlords off the bat as opposed to the fact that everyone who employs folks at minimum wage is forced to raise prices in order not to go out of business.

Every business who is raising prices to support paying their workers minimum wage are at fault.

Minimum wage laws are a trailing benefit. Always behind the times. Every raise to the minimum wage is a (partial) catch up to where it really should be in terms of the concept of a living wage (for anyone - not the Republican talking point, entirely invented out of thin air, that it's meant to be for teenagers with part time jobs).

Those business owners, until each advance, are already making out at the benefit of their workers. So you can blame poor planning, poor foresight there.

And if that's still a painful pill to swallow, rather than "government hates small business", then as another reminder - you have no constitutional right to a profitable business.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#144

Post by [deleted] »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…

[deleted]

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#145

Post by J_Shelby_J »

orangecat wrote: post #108
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #89

Any money given to non-property owners will eventually be extracted by the property owners. UBI given to everyone will eventually lead to the same effective poverty we have now and much wealthier landlords.

Why specifically landlords and not sellers of food, gas, cell phones, etc? Everyone would like to raise their prices, but as long as there's competition they can't do so arbitrarily.

not just landlords. Property owners as well. You extract wealth from the system either renting or paying your self rent. It’s just a matter of when you take those gains. Homeowners do when they sale.

As to why it’s unique to housing; you answered your own question: the housing market is arbitrarily limited in supply, which means it’s artificially low competition, which means people that own take an artificially high profit from owning. There are many rent seeking businesses, but housing is so universal and universally fucked that it accounts for by far the largest wealth transfer.

Everything I’ve written is true for housing now, but direct cash injections make it more apparent. See rent prices exploding after COVID stimulus.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#146

Post by bombcar »

magic_hamster wrote: post #69

I've read the comments on this thread so far and while there are definitely some good points, I think everyone is ignoring a central issue when it comes to welfare: in the US, anything that even remotely resembles socialism is going to be shut down violently regardless of how well it could work. Free education & free healthcare are staples of most western countries, but not the US. Universal basic income has also bee…

The US has free education from kindergarten through high school.

The US also has something akin to UBI, called the earned income tax credit. It's not much to expand that, especially since social security already covers a percentage.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#147

Post by [deleted] »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…

[deleted]

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#148

Post by dfxm12 »

Detrytus wrote: post #83
ben_w wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends how it's funded. Printing money? Yes. Taxing economic rents? Probably not. Owning a fully automated workforce? Yet to be determined.

It doesn't depend on how it's funded. It's a simple mechanics: once the word gets out that everybody is getting free money then all the companies raise their prices, trying to capture that money, because why wouldn't they?

Greedflation already exists without any type of UBI in place. UBI is not meant to combat greedflation. You're right to be worried about greedflation, but being against UBI because greedflation exists simply doesn't follow.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#149

Post by jauntywundrkind »

whitewingjek wrote: post #111

UBI may sound like a worthwhile endeavor to a great many people, but I can't help but think of what we give up with such a system. If I politicaly dissent from the majority (whomsoever that is or whatever they believe) what stops them—the government as often described—from stopping UBI from those that are deemed "unfit."

By definition they're not doing UBI then. That doesn't alleviate your concern that that's how things might go, but your concern is that UBI might not be UBI.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#150

Post by arp242 »

Shadowmist wrote: post #87
arp242 wrote: post #62

Most of these are either fairly short-lived limited pilots, or aren't really "UBI" (e.g. Alaska's $1,600 a year hardly qualifies as UBI as it's just enough to buy groceries with, never mind rent or any other basic needs). A large population with basic needs met and nothing particular they have to do is untested. I don't really know how that will end, but I fear it may not end especially well. Let's be real: no one wo…

I’d go work at McDonalds for a PS5 or whatever, even if I didn’t have to pay for rent and food.

Sure, but it's not clear if there are enough people who will do that. And we also need to ask the question: what if there aren't enough jobs? Everyone without a job should just live off the bare basic necessities without entertainment? Or what will that look like?

There's a lot of optimistic views about UBI, but here is what I think it will be like realistically: poverty. Surviving, but not really living. The bare minimum to not riot in the streets. This is how these sort of things have usually worked out in the past. "Bread and circuses" etc.

As I said, I'm skeptical that all this post-scarcity everything-is-automated future will come to pass any time soon, but if it does, we almost certainly need to do more than UBI. A lot more. Sam Altman is mentioned in this article: OpenAI is built on all of our work. Whether that's "fair use" or "pilfered" is a matter of opinion, but neither view changes the fact that OpenAI takes the works of our culture that we all contributed to and uses it for private profits it keeps to itself. That's not really a huge social problem if it's "just" a company – maybe you can consider it unfair, but that's something else. But if OpenAI and companies like it really do eat the world as the AI maximalists claim it will we end up with a situation where an exceedingly tiny minority will have an enormous percentage of the world's wealth, all of which is very directly built on the public's work, and it's no longer "just" a company with handsome profits.

That entire situation will be spectacularly untenable. So what do we do with that? The entire "OpenAI is a foundation for the public good" thing went out the window as soon as green bits of paper became involved (and of course that was going to happen).

That's not the bit Sam Altman wants to talk about.

"Silicon Valley philosophy" like this is usually only remarkable in how profoundly shallow and self-serving it is.

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